ª"˜˜ª¤.¸Official Team August 2013 Thread!¸.¤ª˜˜"ª&#9733

[momto3gr8boys]

Good Morning everyone!

QOTD.. Do you plan on taking advantage of Extra Magic Hours? Do you like to start your vacation days bright and early or stay up very late?

I was looking at the park hours on the Disney site last night. I was shocked at how late some of them are! What generally happens is I plan my days around the recommendations of Touring Plans and EasyWDW. They usually recommend the best parks as the ones without EMH. So the parks I picked have regular open and close hours.
But when I saw the calendar, MK for example closes at 9 only twice in our 9 day trip. Every other night is 11pm, and on the weekends the EMH's go to 1a.m and 2 a.m.

My kids are older now, and we'd be fine to sleep in and do late nights at the parks but I don't know if it will mess with the advantage rope drop gives us. For example, will we even get to ride TSMM if I show up at 11? I don't want to stand in lines for hours because we chose to sleep in.

Decisions, Decisions. I think my family would prefer late night touring now, but it's so hard to let go of our rope drop plans.

Welcome to all the newcomers on this thread!

We have hoppers, but don't specifically plan for the EMH parks. We tend to follow Josh's recommendations, so typically those do not include the EMH parks. That said, I can pretty much guarantee we won't see an early one, but we will most likely take advantage of the late ones. When the kids were young we always took advantage of the EE parks, and then left when the crowds built up. Now I'll be lucky if I can get them up that early!

The exception to this is that we will usually show up early to get on TSMM, but we were able to ride it at closing one night with a fairly short wait, so who knows...we will play that one by ear.

 

[misstdiana]

Okay, its kinda quiet in here. I will toss out another Question of the Day .

After your trip, what do you do with all your vacation photos?

Do you scrapbook them?

Create photobooks? (if so, which site do you use.....Shutterfly? Picaboo? etc.)

Make prints for photo albums?

Do trip videos and post them to youtube?

Keep them on your computer and forget they are there?

And how many photos would you estimate you normally take on an "average" trip?

Basically we just keep them on the computer and forget they are there. I dod post them to facebook and try to upload them to a site so they are saved such as flickr esp since they are allowing more storage now.

 

[misstdiana]

QUESTION OF THE DAY

The day you arrive and the day you depart the World will you hang at the hotel pool or squeeze in a park visit? How much time do you expect to have at either location on those days?

Hmmmm that is up in the air, I am thinking no park visits for either day? but I asked my daughter and she said yes.....

 

[Pirate princess 2]

So a couple of days ago my inlaws decided they wanted to join us. They got the FD PIN in the mail. I'm so excited because we were able to rebook with them and save a bunch. The PIN started the day we are arriving so we didn't have to change anything. So we decided to switch from ASMo to CBR. I justed wanted to share cuz I was so excited about the savings.

Anyway, EMH usually we will take advantage of evening hours, but not early ones. The latest we have it was around 12:30am last year. That night MK was open until 3 am! That's crazy late. DD9 was with me and DH. DS11 was tired and went back to the hotel with grandma and grandpa. I thought it was funny little sister stayed awake longer than big brother.

 

[pigletto]

So a couple of days ago my inlaws decided they wanted to join us. They got the FD PIN in the mail. I'm so excited because we were able to rebook with them and save a bunch. The PIN started the day we are arriving so we didn't have to change anything. So we decided to switch from ASMo to CBR. I justed wanted to share cuz I was so excited about the savings.

Anyway, EMH usually we will take advantage of evening hours, but not early ones. The latest we have it was around 12:30am last year. That night MK was open until 3 am! That's crazy late. DD9 was with me and DH. DS11 was tired and went back to the hotel with grandma and grandpa. I thought it was funny little sister stayed awake longer than big brother.

Yay!!!! That's a great change. We're staying at CBR too for the first time and we're excited. I originally booked the preferred room but switched to Standard to save the money. I put in requests for Jamaica and Aruba so we'll see where we end up. There is a great CBR thread on the Resorts forum, and in the sub-forum above the resorts forum there is a wonderful thread full of CBR pictures to get you excited! The pool looks awesome. My 9 year old will love it!

 

[Pirate princess 2]

Yay!!!! That's a great change. We're staying at CBR too for the first time and we're excited. I originally booked the preferred room but switched to Standard to save the money. I put in requests for Jamaica and Aruba so we'll see where we end up. There is a great CBR thread on the Resorts forum, and in the sub-forum above the resorts forum there is a wonderful thread full of CBR pictures to get you excited! The pool looks awesome. My 9 year old will love it!

Thanks for letting me know. We have never stayed at CBR either. We try to hit a new resort every time. The pool does look great. DD loves pirates, so she will love the pool. We are also in a standard room I know I should have booked the pirate room for her, but we're just not in the room enough to justify the price difference. We are going the 25 to Sept 3. Can't wait!

 

[carrie6466]

Good Morning everyone!

QOTD.. Do you plan on taking advantage of Extra Magic Hours? Do you like to start your vacation days bright and early or stay up very late?

I was looking at the park hours on the Disney site last night. I was shocked at how late some of them are! What generally happens is I plan my days around the recommendations of Touring Plans and EasyWDW. They usually recommend the best parks as the ones without EMH. So the parks I picked have regular open and close hours.
But when I saw the calendar, MK for example closes at 9 only twice in our 9 day trip. Every other night is 11pm, and on the weekends the EMH's go to 1a.m and 2 a.m.

My kids are older now, and we'd be fine to sleep in and do late nights at the parks but I don't know if it will mess with the advantage rope drop gives us. For example, will we even get to ride TSMM if I show up at 11? I don't want to stand in lines for hours because we chose to sleep in.

Decisions, Decisions. I think my family would prefer late night touring now, but it's so hard to let go of our rope drop plans.

We only to AM EMH at AK. We do like the late EMH, but we don't do rope drop if we stay until 2am. Last time we had a trip with late hours like that, my then 7 yr old dd wanted to stay until closing (3 am ... there were 3 hour EMH then), but by 2 mom and dad were too tired.

We do go back and swim and nap. On the previously mentioned 3 am day, dd had taken a swim and then slept for 4 hours.

My family definitely prefers the late night touring these days. That's why I only made a few breakfast adrs and only one is early.

 

[amomma23]

Welcome to all the newcomers on this thread!

We have hoppers, but don't specifically plan for the EMH parks. We tend to follow Josh's recommendations, so typically those do not include the EMH parks. That said, I can pretty much guarantee we won't see an early one, but we will most likely take advantage of the late ones. When the kids were young we always took advantage of the EE parks, and then left when the crowds built up. Now I'll be lucky if I can get them up that early!

The exception to this is that we will usually show up early to get on TSMM, but we were able to ride it at closing one night with a fairly short wait, so who knows...we will play that one by ear.

We follow Josh, too but we don't hop. That means no EMH for us. Our kids are still young, and early risers. We tend to hit RD every day, break midday, then head back out around dinner time.
I don't think we'll be hitting all of the night time shows this trip. We're used to the early close, September hours. I think that's the only thing we'll miss since we switched to August this year.

 

[Mrs. M. Mouse]

Yay!!!! That's a great change. We're staying at CBR too for the first time and we're excited. I originally booked the preferred room but switched to Standard to save the money. I put in requests for Jamaica and Aruba so we'll see where we end up. There is a great CBR thread on the Resorts forum, and in the sub-forum above the resorts forum there is a wonderful thread full of CBR pictures to get you excited! The pool looks awesome. My 9 year old will love it!

We're at CBR too. And I have a 9 year old too...is your 9 yr a dd or ds? my dd is so into Pirates right now she's excited for the pool! we requested jamaica and aruba too.

 

[DisMom1981]

Wow this page has picked up now that we are getting so close to August! I've missed a lot here, but we've been distracted trying to get our money pit (starter home) on the market again (vomit). We are LONGING for this trip though I don't want to wish summer away. Especially after the winter we've had! We've been looking forward to it for so long- almost a year! Still haven't paid it off but we only have until July 4 so I guess I'll make that call any day now!

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[Gitts2008]

Wow this page has picked up now that we are getting so close to August! I've missed a lot here, but we've been distracted trying to get our money pit (starter home) on the market again (vomit). We are LONGING for this trip though I don't want to wish summer away. Especially after the winter we've had! We've been looking forward to it for so long- almost a year! Still haven't paid it off but we only have until July 4 so I guess I'll make that call any day now!

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Good Luck! We had a money pit that attempted to kill us several times. In the end we won

 

[DisMom1981]

Also, I still don't know if I should add the dining plan. We have 2 character meals, BOG and Biergarten planned which I know will be pricey, but Im not sure if it justifies meal plan. We are staying on site but will have a car- so I'd like to keep cereal and milk in the room for cheap and fast breakfast- but does POP even have a mini fridge in the room? Also- we would only get 3 plans since DD is too young for one.....so we could share food with her and toddler. We do like ice cream pit stops and will probably eat a lot in the Epcot countries (at least DH and I will). Thoughts?

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[Disneylover99]

Wow this page has picked up now that we are getting so close to August! I've missed a lot here, but we've been distracted trying to get our money pit (starter home) on the market again (vomit). We are LONGING for this trip though I don't want to wish summer away. Especially after the winter we've had! We've been looking forward to it for so long- almost a year! Still haven't paid it off but we only have until July 4 so I guess I'll make that call any day now!


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Yikes, July 4 is my pay off date too and all I've made is my initial deposit! This is going to hurt!

But it will be worth it, I know! Can't wait to go!

 

[DisMom1981]

Good Luck! We had a money pit that attempted to kill us several times. In the end we won

Thanks! Nice to hear something encouraging in this glum market!

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[DisMom1981]

Yikes, July 4 is my pay off date too and all I've made is my initial deposit! This is going to hurt!

But it will be worth it, I know! Can't wait to go!

Ha! And I was going to pay it off in chunks so it wouldn't hurt as much.......not sure what happened to that plan! We've only made the initial deposit too!

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[JavArmy]

Also, I still don't know if I should add the dining plan. We have 2 character meals, BOG and Biergarten planned which I know will be pricey, but Im not sure if it justifies meal plan. We are staying on site but will have a car- so I'd like to keep cereal and milk in the room for cheap and fast breakfast- but does POP even have a mini fridge in the room? Also- we would only get 3 plans since DD is too young for one.....so we could share food with her and toddler. We do like ice cream pit stops and will probably eat a lot in the Epcot countries (at least DH and I will). Thoughts?

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I'm terrible about knowing if the dining plan is worth it! We just do it out of convenience so our food is prepaid and we don't have to worry about money while we are there.

On another note, rooms at POP! do have the mini fridges

 

[racinjunkie]

Also, I still don't know if I should add the dining plan. We have 2 character meals, BOG and Biergarten planned which I know will be pricey, but Im not sure if it justifies meal plan. We are staying on site but will have a car- so I'd like to keep cereal and milk in the room for cheap and fast breakfast- but does POP even have a mini fridge in the room? Also- we would only get 3 plans since DD is too young for one.....so we could share food with her and toddler. We do like ice cream pit stops and will probably eat a lot in the Epcot countries (at least DH and I will). Thoughts?

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I believe that all resort rooms have at least a mini fridge now. Could you look at menus and prices to try to see if DDP would be beneficial? I ran the numbers after one of our trips when both my kids were under 9 and it still saved us money but we don't typically share meals and used all CS and TS credits. I'm going to run the numbers after this trip but we're 4 adults now and after my trip won't really help you, sorry. For me, it's a huge weight off of me to know that meals are prepaid, it adds to my enjoyment of the trip.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Happy father's day to all the dads out there this morning!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIt0NLJQvTY

"Roll the Disney videos!"

 

[DisMom1981]

I'm terrible about knowing if the dining plan is worth it! We just do it out of convenience so our food is prepaid and we don't have to worry about money while we are there.

On another note, rooms at POP! do have the mini fridges

Ahhh that is helpful. Thanks! I guess my plan this time was to keep track of money spent on food and then decide based on that for "next time."

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[Disneylover99]

Also, I still don't know if I should add the dining plan. We have 2 character meals, BOG and Biergarten planned which I know will be pricey, but Im not sure if it justifies meal plan. We are staying on site but will have a car- so I'd like to keep cereal and milk in the room for cheap and fast breakfast- but does POP even have a mini fridge in the room? Also- we would only get 3 plans since DD is too young for one.....so we could share food with her and toddler. We do like ice cream pit stops and will probably eat a lot in the Epcot countries (at least DH and I will). Thoughts?

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Pop has a fridge in every room. All the values have them now. Pop is where we will be too!

Although we love free dining, I don't think I would ever purchase the meal plan. We always bring our own snacks and breakfast foods too. We always end up with several quick service meals left over on our last day, because we often get two or three meals to share at lunch (instead of 4).

We can't stand being too stuffed in that August heat! So we never really eat all that much in Disney!